Canada fired scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng for sharing information with China, report says
- The husband and wife team were escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg before being sacked
- The high-security facility conducted research on the most dangerous human and animal pathogens, such as Ebola
Canada fired two scientists working at a high-security infectious disease laboratory in 2021 because they provided confidential information to China, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Officials concluded that the husband and wife team were “a realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security”, the paper said, citing a mass of documents that the government released after a long fight with opposition legislators who had demanded information behind the sackings.
Health Minister Mark Holland, decrying what he called unacceptable security lapses at the lab at the time, said there had been no risk to national security.
Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in 2019 and their security permits revoked. They were fired in 2021.
Canadian police said in 2019 they were launching a probe into the matter but Wednesday’s revelation was the first time that details of the sackings were revealed.
